Culbone

"CULBONE, (also called Kilner), a parish in the hundred of Carhampton, in the county of Somerset, 8 miles W. of Minehead, and 3 from Porlock. The village, consisting of only seven houses, is situated in a delightfully sheltered spot, near the coast of Porlock Bay. The cliffs behind the village rise to the height of 1,200 feet, over which a small stream falls down to the sea, forming a pleasing cascade. The living is a rectory* in the diocese of Bath and Wells, in the patronage of the Earl of Lovelace. The church, dedicated to St. Culbone, is a very old stone edifice, measuring 33 feet long by 12 feet wide, and is supposed to be the smallest in the kingdom; consisting of nave, chancel, porch, and spire. Warner graphically describes it as "the Lilliputian church of Culbone, situated in as extraordinary a spot, as man, in his whimsicality, ever fixed on as a place of worship." It is built in a cove on the cliffs, 400 feet high, containing about half an acre of tolerably level ground, surrounded by almost perpendicular cliffs. The Earl of Lovelace is lord of the manor." From The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) Transcribed by Colin Hinson © 2003